Demon's Games
by RLD Flame-point Callie-co
Summary: What if the apocalypse of NFA was the catastrophe responsible for transforming our world into Panem? In a world ruled by demons, Katniss' actions in the 74th Games sets off a chain of events that will lead her and Angel into a battle for the fate of the entire human race. Response to a challenge by Marcus S. Lazarus.
1. Welcome to the New Age

**Disclaimer: Angel and the Hunger Games are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon and Suzanne Collins, respectively, and the concept for this story belongs to Marcus S. Lazarus. Only the execution of it is mine.**

**Timeline: first part of this chapter picks up from the end of NFA, then jumps to the end of the 74th Hunger Games. **

**Pairings: TBA as the rules of the challenge didn't specify any and I haven't decided yet. Unless things develop differently as I go on, I'll probably stick to canon couples.**

"Let's go to work."

With Angel in the lead, the remaining members of his team charged forward to meet the approaching army. Hack, slash, tear, punch, kick, bite, behead…the world dissolved into a blur of violent motion as they clashed with one demon after another, and another, and another - the horde came on in endless waves, and the ceaseless battle was a tide that swept them up and washed away everything else, the grief over Wesley's death and Lorne's departure, the worry over what else the senior partners might throw at them if by some miracle they survived this battle…

Then the pungent scent of human blood suffused the air, drawing the attention of every vampire present. Gunn, already weakened by his previous injury, had just gotten a chunk torn out of him by something with very long claws, spraying a geyser of blood across the alley. Angel threw aside a demon that was trying to attack him from the side in time to get a clear view of Gunn using the last of his strength to bury a blade in the thing's throat before his body realized it was dying and gave out. He crumpled to the ground and never got up again. He had beaten Illyria's estimate of how long he would last - ten minutes at best - by a full five minutes.

There was no time to mourn or even retrieve his body, because the army continued to pour in on them, and they were now outnumbered a million to three instead of four. The odds against them worsened yet again when four demons got hold of Spike; they each seized a limb and pulled as if to draw and quarter him, and then a fifth grabbed his head and removed it with a single mighty yank.

Spike's body crumbled into a shower of dust, leaving Angel feeling oddly bereft. He couldn't exactly say he was fond of his grand-childe - the man was far too good at pushing his buttons - yet he'd grown used to having Spike around. Whether as an ally or an enemy, Spike had been part of Angel's existence for so long that Angel had believed he would always be there, and the prospect was no longer as repulsive as it had once been. Now he was gone, taken down by a pack of berserker demons of all things. At least it had taken five of them to destroy him; Spike would be proud that he hadn't gone down easily.

The ground shuddered again, and Angel realized he wasn't just feeling shaken after witnessing Spike's demise - the earth actually was shaking as the giant creature whose silhouette he'd glimpsed at a distance lumbered closer, trampling a great number of demons on its own side. It let out a deafening roar when it saw Angel and swung a weapon resembling a huge meat tenderizer at him…

###

Angel woke with a start, breathing hard after reliving that long-ago clash with the Senior Partners' army. It was that time of year again; the nightmares always got particularly bad during the Games. The world he lived in now provided a wide variety of subject matter for nightmares, but throughout the Hunger Games he dreamed exclusively of the battle that had claimed the lives of Spike, Gunn, and Wesley. It only seemed right that one brutal slaughter brought back memories of another, which only ended when he and Illyria had managed to kill the giant by leaping onto its shoulders and sawing through its neck. It crushed the remainder of the army, those that hadn't already been killed by Angel's team or fled when one of their own began stepping on them, as it fell to the ground in its death throes.

Afterward, the two of them that were left thought they'd won; only later did they realize how horrifyingly wrong they were. The demonic legion the Senior Partners sicced on them hadn't been their opposition in some great final battle but a mere distraction - assassinating the Circle of the Black Thorn proved beyond doubt that Angel could never be won over to the side of evil, so the Senior Partners wanted him out of the way while they put their millennia-old plans for a real apocalypse into play.

Wolfram and Hart's influence had already spread to every corner of the globe, and now they finally used it to orchestrate the total collapse of human society, which they then rebuilt into a demon's paradise. North America was reorganized into a single nation called Panem, its human population imprisoned in twelve districts which were actually little more than labor camps where they were forced to spend their lives toiling in service to the demons who now ruled the world.

Of course, some demons required more than the fruits of their subjects' labor, and so the Hunger Games were born. The humans thought the Games were designed to remind them of the Capitol's power and the uselessness of resisting it, but if that was their only purpose the bodies of fallen tributes could at least be returned to their families for a proper burial. No bodies were ever returned, however, because the 'tributes' were in reality sacrifices for demons who preferred to dine on - or had other, even more gruesome uses for - human flesh, and the fact that these were the bodies of humans who had slaughtered each other made them all the tastier. Nearly every single creature spat out by any of the various hell dimensions thrived on the orgy of violence and corruption that was the Hunger Games, delighting in pitting mankind against itself and turning children, who should have been the most innocent among them, into murderers.

Intercontinental travel was impossible thanks to magical barriers so there was no way of knowing if the rest of the world was this bad, if there were Hunger Games everywhere; Angel thought things might be better elsewhere - surely Buffy and all her Slayers, who last he'd heard had taken up residence somewhere in Europe, wouldn't have let their home sink to this level - but he couldn't know for sure unless he found some way of breaking the boundary around North America.

Breaking the boundary, however, would mean breaking the Senior Partners' hold on power, which was beginning to seem impossible. Seventy years after the apocalypse they had somehow managed to undo or at least block the effects of Willow's Slayer activation spell; there must be potential Slayers in Panem, but none of them ever came into their powers. As far as Angel could tell, Panem hadn't had a Slayer in three hundred years, and with nearly every other supernatural entity either cowed into submission or willingly aligning themselves with Wolfram and Hart, Angel and Illyria, the one true ally he had left, were hopelessly outnumbered.

_Speak of the devil, and she will appear,_ he thought as Illyria forced his door open. "I have been monitoring the Games," she announced unnecessarily - she _always_ watched the Games whereas Angel refused to, preferring instead to stay in his quarters and read the books Wesley, Fred, and Gunn had left behind. Gunn's taste in reading material ran mostly to comic books - at least before his brain was altered to make him a legal expert - which were now yellowed with age and frayed around the edges, some of Wesley's books which had already been ancient when he had them were ready to fall apart, and Angel pretty much had them all memorized…still, the choice between rereading his old friends' favorites or watching the Hunger Games was never hard.

"There has been a development," Illyria continued, ignoring his scowl. "I believe it is significant, but you should see it for yourself."

Although reluctant, Angel knew she wouldn't try to get him to watch anything pertaining to the Games without a very good reason, so he followed her to the viewing room they had set up in order to keep an eye out for any sign that the people had had enough and were ready to overthrow their demonic overlords; however, as the decades went by with no indication that rebellion was imminent, Angel had spent less and less time in there. Still, the TVs stayed - at least they provided a diversion for Illyria.

Frozen onscreen was what appeared to be a scene from the end of this year's Games; there were only two tributes left standing, a blond boy and a girl with dark hair in a long braid. The girl had a bow and arrows, while the boy appeared to be unarmed. She would take him down easily. Instead, when the playback commenced, the girl threw away her weapon and took out a handful of nightlock berries.

When the boy grabbed her arm to stop her from eating them, she took his hand and poured some of the berries into his palm, keeping half for herself. "Trust me." A meaningful look passed between them, an unspoken agreement that neither of them would leave without the other.

"Together?" the boy asked.

"Together," she confirmed.

They began counting, the boy pausing to finger the girl's braid when they got to two. On three, they both raised the berries to their mouths.

"They love one another," Illyria explained as Angel stared at the screen. "Both of them come from District Twelve, and their affair became a recurring theme throughout the Games. There was even talk of allowing two victors from the same district so that both could leave the arena alive, but of course the decision was revoked once all the other tributes were dead. There can only be one victor; they must have the correct number of dead to sacrifice, yet they also need a victor to provide the feelings of guilt and shame that are more valuable to certain of their ilk than a corpse." A puzzled frown briefly creased her face; even after a few centuries in the modern world she still had some difficulty grasping the fact that there were demons to whom humans were more valuable alive than dead.

With both remaining tributes poised to end their lives and deprive the Capitol of their 'living sacrifice', the voice of Claudius Templesmith boomed through the speakers, yelling, "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the victors of the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark of District Twelve!"

Illyria's ice-blue eyes flicked toward Angel to gauge his reaction. "You once said overthrowing the Wolf, Ram, and Hart and their allies will be impossible until others are ready to defy their masters and fight alongside us. Is Katniss Everdeen's audacious ploy the act of defiance you have been waiting for?"

Angel finally tore his eyes off the TV. "It'll take more than one act of defiance, Illyria, and Katniss Everdeen just signed her own death warrant - maybe her boyfriend's too. Wolfram and Hart still need another body, and they'll get it one way or another. …They can't touch her in the Capitol, though," he added slowly, thinking aloud. "They may have taken over, but they still thrive on what they've always drawn their strength from: man's inhumanity to man. That's why they've kept so many people alive, why they pit them against each other in these Games…that's why they still keep up the façade, especially in the Capitol so that the humans who've bought in to their regime don't realize what it is they're really following. They won't risk exposing themselves attacking her in their own city when they can wait until she goes home to the most isolated place in Panem and they can arrange an 'accidental' death for her. If I move fast, maybe there's a chance…" He rushed off, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Illyria followed, easily keeping pace with the vampire. "Where are you going?"

"District Twelve! I've gotta get to Katniss Everdeen before Wolfram and Hart do!"

**This is my first time responding to a challenge (i.e. writing someone else's idea) but this one looked interesting and when I found out no one else had taken it up I just couldn't resist. I haven't quite figured out where this will fit into my updating schedule along with my three other active fics, but rest assured I have every intention of finishing it. **


	2. Aftershocks

"The journey to District Twelve should only take one of what your people call weeks; we should easily arrive in time to intercept the Capitol's assassins."

"_I_ should arrive in time. I'm going alone." The words were no sooner out of Angel's mouth than he was forcibly pulled to a halt. Glancing down, he found Illyria's blue-tinged hand on his arm. His gaze then traveled along her leather-encased arm and up to her face, which was set in an expression of consternation and perhaps even concern, though he couldn't swear to the latter.

"Angel, nearly every demon outside our walls knows your face and will kill you on sight. Venturing outside without me would be inadvisable - I may not be the warrior I was of old before my resurrection in this inferior form, yet I can offer you some protection."

That sounded a lot like concern for his wellbeing, which she didn't even attempt to justify by saying Wesley would have wanted her to look after Angel. In the years immediately following the apocalypse, she had often insisted that honoring Wesley's memory was her only reason for sticking with him, though he suspected she stayed because she had nowhere else to go. She certainly didn't want to live under the rule of Wolfram and Hart, a demonic triad she considered lower-class. Over the years, though, her protestations that she was only with him because it was what Wesley would have wanted had decreased; while Angel still wouldn't call her a friend, if only because she wasn't exactly friendly, he was now confident that she respected him for his own sake, and he trusted her without reserve.

"Thanks, but I need you to stay here. The others here look to us as their leaders; if we both left, they'd fall apart. Besides, someone's gotta feed Dru." When Drusilla found them sometime in the first few years after Panem's formation, Angel hadn't known what to do with her - he couldn't forgive her for re-siring Darla, nor could he bring himself to kill her when he saw how Spike's death had broken her and destroyed any last shred of sanity she'd managed to cling to. Ultimately he'd decided to keep her even though caring for an even more deranged Drusilla was very hard work.

"Have I done something to so displease you that you believe pouring blood down the throat of your mentally unbalanced childe is the best use for me?" Illyria demanded.

Angel resumed walking while he tried to placate her. "It's an important job. Drusilla's visions come in handy-"

"When she is cogent enough to relate them in a manner that does not defy understanding. Need I remind you of the rarity of such an occurrence? She spends most of her time huddled in the corner of her quarters, not speaking at all."

As they left their private living space and entered the common area, Alma Coin spotted them and zeroed in like a heat-seeking missile. Even though her arrival gave him an excuse to end his argument with Illyria, Angel wasn't pleased to see her; she was a powerful witch, if not quite on the same level as Willow (then again, nobody could equal Willow Rosenberg) and he knew he should be glad she was on his side rather than Wolfram and Hart's, but something about her rubbed him the wrong way. "Hello, Alma."

She ignored the pleasantry - Alma Coin was generally uninterested in friendly conversation. "Have you seen the end of the Games?"

"I keep Angel apprised of all major news from the outside world," Illyria answered before he could get a word in. "He fears that Katniss Everdeen's act of defiance will make her a target of the Capitol's wrath and means to save her from their vengeance."

Alma's eyebrows rose. "Why? If you intend to use the 'star-crossed lovers from District Twelve' to incite rebellion, the boy would be more useful."

"I don't plan on letting them kill him either," Angel said dryly.

"If we have him, I see no need for the girl at all."

"Are you seriously saying I should leave her to die?"

"Angel would never do that," Illyria declared. "He sees an inherent value in all human life, regardless of the person's usefulness. It's not an entirely invalid viewpoint - for creatures that arose from single cells in the primordial sludge, humans are strangely fascinating. I enjoy observing the community-building behaviors of your kind; you're like a colony of ants."

Alma scowled, not appreciating the comparison, and stalked off in a huff. Illyria's bluish-pink lips curled into a slight smirk as she watched her go.

"This is why I need you to stay here," Angel told her in a voice too soft to reach any other ears. "There are a few people here I don't trust, and after this Alma Coin just shot to the top of the list. If we both left, who knows what she'd do with us gone."

"She would seize the chance to establish herself as leader of our group. We have always been the leaders because we were the first to fight against the new order and were responsible for gathering the others dissatisfied with this world and giving them a place to live free of those usurping upstarts' influence-" Her eyes flashed with contempt "-yet the witch desires that position for herself. Her ambition could prove troublesome; perhaps I should kill her."

Angel put a restraining hand on Illyria's shoulder. "Don't jump the gun, okay? Coin might be power-hungry, but she hasn't made any moves against us. For all we know, she never will, and I'd rather not fight her if I don't have to. We have enough enemies outside our walls; we don't need to look for more inside."

"Nevertheless, I will watch her closely until you return."

Several people glanced curiously at them as they proceeded to the elevator that would take them up out of the underground compound they called home, wondering why Angel looked even more serious than usual, as if he were embarking on a life-or-death mission, but unlike Alma Coin they stayed out of the way.

It was still daylight, but the Senior Partners, in their efforts to improve life for all demonkind, had blanketed Panem - maybe even the entire planet - in a force field similar to those used to contain the Hunger Games arenas that blocked the sun's harmful effects and allowed vampires and other nocturnal creatures to move freely during the day. Although he refused to be grateful to Wolfram and Hart for anything, Angel had to admit this was convenient.

Illyria accompanied him to the magical boundary that enclosed their aboveground territory, then stopped to commune with a tree while Angel went on alone. Once he stepped outside the wards, she disappeared from view along with all other signs of habitation; to anyone who happened upon it, this would look like just another stretch of wilderness. If that passerby was a supporter of Wolfram and Hart, they would be suddenly compelled to turn around and go somewhere else. Anyone who was against them, however, would have no trouble entering the rebels' domain.

Angel took a moment to check his map and make sure he was heading in the right direction, then set off for District Twelve.

###

Drusilla, huddled in her favorite corner of her cell, lifted her head and let out a soft wail. _Daddy's gone._ Not gone into dust like her dear Spike, just gone away somewhere else, and he'd left her with the mean blue-haired lady who Drusilla suspected might have stolen her dolls. (In fact, she had discarded them herself, after bashing Miss Edith's head in as punishment for telling her of Spike's death, but she didn't remember that.)

_Daddy's gone away, but he'll come back with a pretty little songbird…a mockingjay._ Drusilla smiled and began humming to herself. _It's been such a long time since I had a pet._

###

A week later, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark boarded the train that would take them home amid a cacophonous eruption of fanfare. Almost everyone in the Capitol was sad to see their favorite couple go…with a few exceptions. President Coriolanus Snow's only regret was that Katniss wasn't leaving in a box, and that he wouldn't get the privilege of choking the life out of her himself. He badly wanted to; his fury at her defiance, a fury he recognized as too powerful, too primal, to have originated entirely with him, demanded it. Unfortunately, as the Senior Partners' top representative on the physical plane, he had to play the role of Panem's president, and that did not include carrying out assassinations in person.

_Her blood _will_ be shed, though,_ he assured himself. _District Twelve is a dangerous place - so isolated, and in such inhospitable terrain - its citizens meet tragic ends all the time, and the same can easily befall her…or the boy._ Unable to stomach any more of the spectacle of all those people fawning over the victors, he left the balcony where he had been watching them and locked himself in his office. _One of them will die within a week, I swear. Then the body can be allocated appropriately, and the other will be left to endure the agony of life without their lover._

_ NO! THE TARGET WILL NOT BE LEFT TO CHANCE. IT MUST BE HER!_

It was fortunate that Snow had sat down at his desk, or he would have collapsed from the force of the three Senior Partners' voices booming like a thunderstorm in his head.

_THE BOY WOULD HAVE SURRENDERED TO HIS FATE, BUT KATNISS EVERDEEN REFUSED TO ACCEPT IT. NO HUMAN WITH SUCH AN INDOMITABLE SPIRIT CAN BE ALLOWED TO EXIST; IT IS A THREAT TO EVERYTHING WE HAVE WORKED FOR. SHE MUST BE SHOWN HER PLACE, THEN CRUSHED LIKE THE INSIGNIFICANT INSECT SHE IS!_

_ And she will be, _Snow promised. The Senior Partners fell silent, satisfied for the moment. Snow took a moment to recover - having Old Ones in your head took its toll - then stood up and walked over to the bookshelf behind his desk, which contained, among other things, a rather unusual bookend: a centuries-old human skull. "Wesley!"

The ghost of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce materialized in Snow's office with a heavy sigh. "Yes, President?" He couldn't remember the name of the man who'd summoned him; thanks to a 'perpetuity clause' in the employment contract he'd signed when he and the rest of the team took over Wolfram and Hart's Los Angeles branch, he had been unable to move on after his death but was instead forced to continue working for the evil lawyers-turned-dictators. After centuries of servitude, the names and faces of all the Senior Partners' vessels started to blend together - the only thing that differentiated the white-haired man in front of him from his long line of predecessors was his sickly sweet scent, like blood and roses.

"I need you to send a special forces unit to District Twelve. We have a problem that must be eliminated."

"What problem?"

"Katniss Everdeen. And Wesley? Make sure she meets an appropriately violent end."

"Yes, sir."

Wesley vanished - one of the very few advantages of being a ghost was being able to go places without crossing the distance between - and reappeared in an underground laboratory where Snow's 'special forces' were kept. "_Surge, __quia oboedisti voci meae_!" As he spoke the incantation, three hulking, mostly humanoid but grotesquely misshapen figures lumbered out of the lab's shadowy corners.

In the old world that had existed before Panem, a scientist named Maggie Walsh had attempted to create an army of super-soldiers like these by combining parts of humans and demons with the cutting edge technology of her day. Her project was a dismal failure, but with unlimited time on his hands and knowledge of demonology and sorcery that far surpassed Dr. Walsh's, Wesley was able to improve on her design. His creations were lethal, but unlike the failed prototype, Adam, they had no capacity for independent thought or autonomous action; they were dead things that could only be animated and controlled through spells.

_One of these abominations could easily tear the girl apart; she stands no chance against three,_ Wesley thought sadly as he gave the human/demon/robot hybrid soldiers their orders. She would be slaughtered, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. His punishment would be bad enough if the Senior Partners ever found out he'd commanded the hybrids to give her a quick, painless end. He had felt guilt severe enough to crush whatever was left of his soul when he mutilated the bodies of dead Peacekeepers to create these monstrosities (they hadn't exactly been innocent, but nothing they had done in life was heinous enough to earn such degradation after their deaths), and that wasn't even the worst thing Wesley was coerced into doing since his own death, but still, he had never hated what he had become quite as much as he did right now.

**Poor Wesley. I think this may be the worst thing I've ever done to a character.**

**As you may have surmised from Alma Coin being a witch, District 13's nuclear weapons will be replaced with magical ones in this story. I'm also going to try to write the rebellion as more of an actual fight than a media stunt, because…no. You do not relegate the heroine to doing film spots, and I can't see that being Angel's battle strategy.**


End file.
